Women Play a Crucial Role in Development – Justified

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Women play a crucial role in development but they have largely been ignored. Much of women’s work remains unrecognized, uncounted and unpaid in the home, in agriculture, in food production and in child care. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan once remarked, ‘Study after study has shown that there is no effective development strategy in which women does not play a central role.

When women are fully involved, the benefits can be seen immedi­ately; families are healthier, and better fed; their income, savings and reinvestment go up. And, what is true of families is also true of communities, and in the long run, of whole countries.’

In the last decade, all over the world, including India, women have partic­ipated in development processes on a wider scale than ever before, even if only at small-scale level. For example, they have been main actors in micro-credit schemes all over the world; they ran their own businesses (e.g., a women cooperative society in Gujarat which prepares a well-known brand of Papad ‘Lijjat,’ and recently developed ‘Self-Help Group’ in Rajasthan and elsewhere are some of the examples of contribution of women in development).

A recent wealth management study says that ‘by 2020 women millionaires would outnumber their male counterparts and that within 20 years, 60 per cent of the world’s wealth would be managed by women’. It is evident that more and more companies in our country now have women in powerful positions.

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In so many companies the person at the top is now a woman, like Indra Nooyi of Pepsi Co., Kiran Majumdar Shaw of Eicon and Chanda Kochar of ICICI bank. Capitalism has benefited an elite group of educated, urban women who are enjoying unprecedented opportunities—from heading to Western countries and America for MBAs to launching their own companies. Besides running businesses, they are also involved at local level institu­tions in many different countries. In India, 30 per cent seats are reserved in for women PRIs, urban local bodies and other civic institutions.